Australian, Asian and Pacific Literatures

This course will explore literature from the Australian, Asian, and South Pacific region. Students will focus on Australia's colonial outback and horsemen stories, cosmopolitanism of the 1980s, aboriginal literature of the 1990s, and contemporary Torres Strait and Polynesian literatures; develop an understanding of reformulations of place that respond to both contemporary and traditional understandings of islands, archipelagoes, and identity; investigate how national and ethnic identity, gender, sexuality, and class are depicted; and consider how such issues as identity politics, the environment, and globalization are depicted in literature from across the Asia-Pacific region.